This weekend in Big Sur, California at the Henry Miller Memorial Library, a weekend Allen Ginsberg celebration, beginning tonight with a choral reading of “Howl”, a reading/performance by Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye and a screening of the 2010 film, Howl, starring James Franco, with filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman there to answer questions
Not to be confused with – not at all to be confused with! – a low-budgeted horror-flick of that name that seems to be circulating.
More of Randy Roark‘s remarkable ephemera (see his copy of Allen’s notes on Bob Dylan here)
Randy notes: “Typescript with Allen’s corrections of the first page of a long unpublished poem from his journals in 1979. One of my jobs was to find poems and such in his journals. This one apparently didn’t make the cut.”
And another one here
Too late to make it here last week, but, in case anyone missed it, here’s Lucy Jones’ “‘A rocket up the backside of conformity – how Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” transformed pop”,
that appeared in The Guardian
and (Allen and performance) on the BBC (the full program can be seen here)
and, on the BBC, this weekend – Jeet Thayil‘s radio-portrait – Ginsberg in India. (More information about that program here)
Aram Saroyan on the Philip Whalen biography on Hypoallergic
Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal‘s sexual encounter on Dangerous Minds
and Jack Kerouac, as the subject of an awful and naive (overblown) reading of a 1962 letter (see here) in Salon, wherein JK opines (among other things) that Marilyn Monroe was – quote “fucked to death” – unquote. As one level-headed correspondent labeling himself/herself “The Fool” writes: “This character assassin sure reads a lot into one private letter, most of which is written in the most unserious style imaginable for the most part reflecting off-the-cuff informal, wasted banter. From that (author), (David) Krajicek extracts one sentence, wrenches it from any kind of minimally sympathetic context, and proceeds to chew the scenery with an incredibly overwrought interpretation.”
And another correspondent, “Langley Park” (sic), writes: “I think he (Kerouac) was right, and it’s very perceptive of him. I think the burden of who she was and what people wanted from her, and what they did to her, killed her, she was fucked to death”.
(Disappointing, since Krajicek was the author of this seemingly-well-researched article)
Here’s Brian Hassett reporting on last week’s Lowell Celebrates Kerouac 2015
and here’s an enthusiastic review of last week’s “Still Howling” event
Patti Smith reads “Footnote to Howl” (“Holy, holy, holy..”), on October 7, on “the day”.
Well, what do you know, “Howl” and Allen Ginsberg was a question on the popular quiz-show, Jeopardy, Tuesday night (in the category of “Modern American Poetry” – “A critic said this 1956 poem was “a tirade against those who do not share the poet’s…sexual orientation”)
And, to round things off (on the Round-Up) this week, a selection of recent Howl-at-60 posters
